Tag: Railways

Inlandsbanan 5: Ulriksfors to Vilhelmina

The latest in my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden, still covering the northward journey along Inlandsbanan.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden. Just before moving on to the details of this post, Anna and her fellow residents of Trosa are locked in battle with greedy/ corrupt local politicians over plans to build a new road that the area does not need or want. I urge you to visit this post, which was put up yesterday and offer your support. As a veteran of the King’s Lynn incinerator affair this touches a particular chord with me. For the rest of this post we are continuing the journey north along Inlandsbanan.

THE JOURNEY

As we left Ulriksfors behind us, I was temporaril back to photographing from a moving train.

DSCN8907DSCN8911DSCN8912DSCN8913DSCN8914DSCN8915DSCN8916DSCN8917DSCN8918DSCN8919DSCN8920DSCN8921DSCN8922DSCN8925DSCN8926DSCN8930DSCN8932DSCN8933DSCN8934DSCN8937DSCN8938

Not long after passing the house pictured above I was able to get this picture of an old locomotive:

DSCN8939

Here are the remaining photos I got before arriving into Vilhelmina…

DSCN8944DSCN8945DSCN8947DSCN8948DSCN8950DSCN8951DSCN8953DSCN8954DSCN8955DSCN8961DSCN8963DSCN8964DSCN8966DSCN8968DSCN8970DSCN8973DSCN8977DSCN8979DSCN8983DSCN8987DSCN8991DSCN8992DSCN8993DSCN8994DSCN8995DSCN9004DSCN9011DSCN9012DSCN9013DSCN9017

The stop at Vilhelmina was not a long one, as the stop at the next station along, Vilhelmina Norra, was the first of two designated meal stops, but I did get these pictures…

DSCN9022DSCN9023

Beyond Vilhelmina but before Vilhelmina Norra, which I have decided to give a whole post to itself, I managed to get a few more photographs from the moving train.

DSCN9024DSCN9025DSCN9026DSCN9027DSCN9028DSCN9030DSCN9032DSCN9034DSCN9037DSCN9038DSCN9039DSCN9040

There will be a further three posts about my journey along Inlandsbanan, one covering Vilhelmina Norra, one covering the stretch from Vilhelmina Norra to the arctic circle, and the final post covering the journey from the edge of the arctic circle to Gallivare, summing up the whole experience and setting the scene for subsequent posts by explaining events that transpired in Gallivare that had a considerable effect on my plans.

 

Inlandsbanan 4: Ostersund to Ulriksfors

The next stage in my account of my travels around Sweden. Read, enjoy and please share.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this latest installment in my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden. My previous posts about the journey along Inlandsbanan can be found here.

THE JOURNEY

With the train from Ostersund to Gallivare leaving at 7:20 AM it was necessary to leave my accommodation early (not that many would have been tempted to linger in the Pensionat Bjornen anyway!). I arrived at the station in good time, and this not being Britain so did the train.

DSCN8797DSCN8798DSCN8799

Settled in my seat, seat 40 (I had booked the same seat number on both the Mora-Ostersund and Ostersund-Gallivare trains), I was ready to do my best to capture the scenery that was visible through my window…

DSCN8800DSCN8801DSCN8802DSCN8803DSCN8804DSCN8806DSCN8807DSCN8811DSCN8812DSCN8813DSCN8815DSCN8816DSCN8818DSCN8819DSCN8820DSCN8827DSCN8829DSCN8832DSCN8833DSCN8840DSCN8845DSCN8847DSCN8852

DSCN8853
This being a fourteen hour trip there were two scheduled meal stops. My order for the first was the smoked pork collar sandwich.

DSCN8855DSCN8859DSCN8867DSCN8868DSCN8869DSCN8873DSCN8874DSCN8877DSCN8878DSCN8887DSCN8889DSCN8890DSCN8891DSCN8898DSCN8899

Shortly after crossing the bridge through whose metalwork I took the picture above we arrived at Ulriksfors where we were stopped long enough for me to identify our whereabouts, and hence where the first part of my account of the journey from Ostersund to Gallivare ends.

DSCN8900DSCN8901DSCN8902DSCN8903

Inlandsbanan 3: Asarna to Ostersund

The latest in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest installment in my series about my recent holiday in Sweden. This post brings us to the end of the second leg of the journey north on Inlandsbanan and sets the scene for third and (by a very large margin) longest leg of the journey, the 14-hour trip from Ostersund to Gallivare.

THE JOURNEY

The food stop at Asarna, where my last post ended, comes near the end of the journey from Mora to Ostersund, but there was still plenty to see…

DSCN8748DSCN8749DSCN8750DSCN8751DSCN8756DSCN8760DSCN8762DSCN8765DSCN8766DSCN8767DSCN8769DSCN8773DSCN8775DSCN8776DSCN8781DSCN8782DSCN8783DSCN8784DSCN8786DSCN8788

DSCN8789
I was glad to get this spectacular rainbow on camera.

DSCN8791

DSCN8792
The station at Ostersund Central

DSCN8794DSCN8795DSCN8796

OVERNIGHT IN OSTERSUND

I was booked into the Pensionat Bjornen for the night. It was here that my failure to pick up my phone on departure from Stockholm first adversely affected me (a day later it would do so again). I had not realised and there had been nothing on booking.com to tell me that I would need to make a mobile phonecall to collect my room key. Thankfully someone else booked into the same establishment arrived not long after me and did have her phone with her, so we were both able to get our keys. The Pensionat Bjornen is an annexe of a hotel that sits on the opposie side of the street, and it was to this latter establishment that keys had to be returned in the morning. For a single night stay with an early start it was an acceptable place, and was the cheapest accommodation in a non-shared room that I had anywhere. I conclude this post with a jpg of my official booking.com  review of the establishment:

PB

Inlandsbanan 1: Kristinehamn to Mora

The start of the story of my journey along Inlandsbanan, a sub-series within my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the start of the story of my journey along the Inlandsbanan, a sub-series within my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden.

ROUGH GUIDE TO SWEDEN FAILS

Before getting into the main meat of this post, a few brief comments about The Rough Guide to Sweden, with which I had been equipped. My relationship with this tome got off to poor start when my very first attempt to locate information, about the town of Trosa, where one of my fellow bloggers lives drew a complete blank. Thus I was already less than impressed when I scanned the index for information about Inlandsbanan to see what they made of it and for the second straight time drew a blank. Although subsequent visits to the pages of this book were less marked by failure, there was no real chance that the book would recover in my estimation and at best in reviewers terms it merits one star.

A BRIEF NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Many of the photographs you will see in this series of posts were taken through the windows of moving trains, and for both the second and third legs of the trip my seat was facing against the direction of travel. Therefore, remember when viewing these pictures that I was not able to capture by any means all of the things I wanted to.

THE JOURNEY

I was making two trips this day, first the subject of this post, and then after half an hour at Mora the journey onwards to Ostersund. The journey from Kristinehamn to Mora is part of the official Inlandsbanan route, but not run by Inlandsbanan stock – for this leg we travelled in an ordinary multi-carriage Sveriges Jarnvag train.

I settled into my very comfortable window seat (even second class on a Swedish train is quite luxurious to one used to British public transport) with my camera at the ready to take whatever pictures I could and other than my attempts to capture interesting sights the journey was uneventful until precisely at the scheduled time the train pulled into the platform at Mora to conclude its journey…

DSCN8389DSCN8390DSCN8391DSCN8392DSCN8393DSCN8394DSCN8396DSCN8397DSCN8403DSCN8404DSCN8406DSCN8407DSCN8409DSCN8410DSCN8413DSCN8416DSCN8418DSCN8419DSCN8420DSCN8421DSCN8422DSCN8426DSCN8427DSCN8428DSCN8430DSCN8433DSCN8434DSCN8435DSCN8436DSCN8437DSCN8438DSCN8439DSCN8440DSCN8441DSCN8442DSCN8443DSCN8444DSCN8445DSCN8446DSCN8447DSCN8448DSCN8449DSCN8450DSCN8451DSCN8452DSCN8453DSCN8454DSCN8455DSCN8456DSCN8457DSCN8458DSCN8459DSCN8460DSCN8461DSCN8462DSCN8463DSCN8464DSCN8465DSCN8466DSCN8467DSCN8468DSCN8470DSCN8471DSCN8472DSCN8473DSCN8474DSCN8476DSCN8477DSCN8478DSCN8480DSCN8481DSCN8483DSCN8484DSCN8485

Preparing for Inlandsbanan – Stockholm to Kristinehamn

The long-awaited resumption of my series of posts about Sweden. This one sets the scene for a number of posts about my travels on Inlandsbanan.

INTRODUCTION

It has been a long while since I last created a post, but I am now ready to go again with my accounts of my trip to beautiful Sweden. Having spent a very enjoyable few days in the company of my cousin and his fiance (see here for more details) it was time for me to make use of my one-country inter-rail pass, allowing up to eight days worth of rail travel in Sweden.

THE PROLOGUE TO INLANDSBANAN

My first journey on my inter-rail pass was a short hop of just over two hours from Stockholm to Kristinehamn where I would stay overnight before experiencing Inlandsbanan on days two and three of this part of the holiday (the distance from Kristinehman to the northern outpost of Gallivare, pronounced yell-ee-vara, is 1,364km which converts to roughly 850 miles).

At this stage I had not booked anything in advance, a mistake that I learned from after the experiences both on the train and at Kristinehamn, where I paid far more for a room than I ought to have done. Indeed one of the things I did in my room in Kristinehamn was make use of the wifi to book seats on three legs of Inlandsbanan and rooms in Ostersund fot the following night and then for two nights in Gallivare, although this latter did not work out, of which more anon.

The difficulties caused by my failure to reserve a seat on the train notwithstanding, I did get some pictures on the journey…

DSCN8352DSCN8353DSCN8354DSCN8355DSCN8356DSCN8357DSCN8358

KRISTINEHAMN

I did some exploring in this pretty little town once I was settled. Here are my pictures from Kristinehamn…

DSCN8362DSCN8363DSCN8364DSCN8365DSCN8366DSCN8367DSCN8368DSCN8369DSCN8370DSCN8371DSCN8372DSCN8373DSCN8374DSCN8375DSCN8376DSCN8377DSCN8378DSCN8379DSCN8380DSCN8381DSCN8382DSCN8383DSCN8384DSCN8385DSCN8386

DSCN8387
Many Swedish stations feature this kind of diagram somewhere.

Having produced this little post I will start, probably tomorrow, on a succession of posts detailing the Inlandsbanan experience…

Musical Keys and Imaging

An account of today at work and yesterday at Musical keys.

INTRODUCTION

This post has two very disparate strands – yesterday’s Musical Keys event for Autistic People and tody at work.

IMAGING

While I have imaged a wide variety of stuff today at work I am going to concentrate on some commemorative coin lots that were of particular quality…

351351-a351-b351-c352352-a352-b352-c

353
I did not have time to provide close-ups of all these coins…
353-a
…so I selected the one featuring a picture of Nelson (we are in Norfolk after all) for the treatmnent.

353-b353-c

354
This lot featured an extra requirement.
354-a
Namely providing a shot focussing on the coin and info sheet into which it is set.

354-b354-c354-d355355-a355-b355-c356356-a356-b356-c

357
The last of the commemorative coins.

357-a357-b357-c

510
A large collection of themed stamp books.

510-a510-b

511
Inidvidual mounted stamps
511-a
A close up of a single set
511-b
an even close up of two individual stamps.

666666-a

667
Old maps…

668669

689
… and an even older map to finish

MUSICAL KEYS

The 12 years and older session of the Musical Keys workshop run as an NAS West Norfolk activity started at 4:45PM yesterday and ran until 6:15PM. I was there both as participant and as one 0f the two designated committee members to be present at the event (the other was group leader Karan whose younger son was participating). As usual with Musical Keys the main piece of equipment we were using was a miniature computer:

DSCN6338

For the first part of the session we were playing computer drums:

DSCN6340

After a mid-session break during which a birthday cake which Karan had very kindly made (gluten-free as her son has an adverse reaction to gluten) and which was absolutely delicious, we moved on to the second part of the session, which featured a system whereby lines had to be drawn across the screen so that balls would bounce of them to create sounds. For those of my generation it looks a bit like a very early BBC Micro game!

The basic set up
An arrangement of lines which prevents any of the balls (released from the nozzle you can see top centre) from escaping. I do not know what kind of sound this generates, as at no time while the sound was on did I have this many lines in place.

As anyone who knows what the weather was like in King’s Lynn yesterday early evening will be aware it was not suitable for photography on the way to the Scout Hut, where as so often with NAS West Norfolk events this took place, but I did get this picture on the way home…

DSCN6343

Autism Awareness Day

This is a post created for Autism Awareness Day. Read, enjoy and please share.

INTRODUCTION

Today is Autism Awareness day. Therefore there will be a lot about autism, some from autistic people, some from autism advocates etc. This is my first offering of the day, and I shall start with…

AUTISM AND ME – A TIMELINE

Of course, since I have written about all these things before many of my readers already know a good deal of this. Autism is lifelong, but not always diagnosed as early as it should be (indeed there are still problems in my part of the world with people waiting literally years for a diagnosis). Thus although I am a forty year old autistic person my timeline spans less than ten of those years…

  • Late 2006 – Diagnosed at Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Support Services
  • 2007 became involved with Asperger East Anglia
  • 2007 took part in a research project relating to autism for the first time (I still do so on a regular basis)
  • 2008-9 Worked with Asperger East Anglia full-timers and some local volunteers to establish a support group in King’s Lynn
  • 2011 was appointed group leader of the King’s Lynn support group and coincidental with that launched this blog.
  • 2012 Funding cuts forced the King’s Lynn support group to go it alone, which we did to the best of our abilities
  • 2013 The group had a meeting room at the local football club, though the most significant event of this year for me personally was in April when I got the first paid job I had since being diagnosed (the same job I am still in today).
  • 2014 the King’s Lynn Asperger Support Society as the group was by then known lost its meeting room and made do with meeting where we could. On October 24th of that year I launched a personal twitter account, @aspitweets, which now has just over 3,500 followers.
  • 2015 After months of falling attendances, I finally conceded defeat over KLASS, which when I finally held up my hands had survived on no funding of any kind for 34 months. Subsequently I found out about an awareness event that the West Norfolk branch of the National Autistic Society were holding within walking distance of my home and went along to learn more, joined the group and was subsequently given a place on the committee.
  • 2016 Will be helping to run NAS West Norfolk’s Positive Autism Awareness Conference on April 15th, at which I will also be putting on a photographic display. Also, having attended and enjoyed AutismCon 2016 and given them detailed feedback, my blog post on the subject will be used for publicity purposes for AutismCon 2017, at which I may well get to put on another photographic display.

AUTISM AWARENESS

While increasing autism awareness is a laudable goal, it is insufficient. In an attempt to help explaining my view of where autism awareness fits I have produced a mini flow-chart to which I will append some words of explanation:

Autism

In the UK at least, not many people are actually completely unaware of autism, although their understanding of it and what it means is often limited (sadly in some cases deliberately so). Acceptance, which is the next stage up from understanding is something that far fewer have managed. Inclusion is the final goal, and by inclusion I mean full acceptance of the autistic person complete with foibles, tics, stims et al.

SPECIAL INTERESTS

Something that autistic people are well-known for is having special interests. The word obsession with its negative connotations should be avoided in this context. My own special interests include photography, public transport (see www.londontu.be for more on this) and cricket (watching brief only – I never had any aptitude as a player).

PHOTOGRAPHS TO FINISH

Well done all of you have made to this stage, as a reward here are some pictures which between them relate to two of my listed special interests.

DSCN4265
All but the last two of these pictures are from a walk a took yesterday afternoon.

DSCN4266DSCN4267DSCN4268DSCN4269DSCN4270DSCN4271DSCN4272DSCN4273DSCN4275DSCN4276

DSCN4254
I have used this once before, but wanted to include a picture showcasing one of my special interests. This one, showing both reverses and the accompanying info is an example of what the auction image should have looked like.
TY4
Anyone who sees this last picture is a worthy recipient of the message!

Heritage railways: Nearly a very nasty train crash

This excellent piece by David Hencke calls for no further comment on my part…

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

steam locomotive tangmere Tangemere – the steam locomotive involved in the ” near miss” train crash. Pic credit: Wikipedia

CROSS POSTED ON BY-LINE.COM

The nostalgia for the age of steam has been turned into a profitable business. Rail trips using historic steam locomotives are very popular at holiday times. I enjoy them myself. They are not cheap but then safety standards for the travelling public need to be very high and it costs a lot of money to maintain steam locomotives.

Last year on one of these trips there was nearly a catastrophic train crash.  A steam special from Bristol run by West Coast Railways overshot a red light at Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire coming to rest on the South Wales main line only a minute after a 125  First Great Western express to Paddington had passed by. Some 750 people were on both trains. The inspector’s  damning report is here.

I am…

View original post 409 more words

A Tough Day at Work

An account of today at work, and some images from this week.

INTRODUCTION

Although the text element of this post is about today specifically, the images I include come from several different days. Also, although the text refers to two auctions, the one coming up this Wednesday, a full catalogue for which can be viewed here, the images all relate to the February auction, which is nearly all done. 

AN EXHAUSTING DAY

Because Wednesday’s auction is at the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich, and we cannot have viewing days there it was necessary to lay entire auction out for viewing in the shop. There being exactly one person physically capable of doing so in attendance it was straightforward to establish whose task this would be.

This process required setting up a table at the back of the job (a couple of minutes), transferring the stock from where it was being stored (approximately an hour and a quarter all told) and then checking off each item to make sure all was present and correct (another hour and a half even at my work rate).

This task accomplished, and sandwiches consumed, it was time to get back to imaging items that will be going under the hammer on February 24th. This is a much more varied auction than this coming Wednesday’s specialised affair, featuring a full range of items, some of which I now display…

The above gallery shows the first 28 lots of the auction. My second gallery shows items from elsewhere in the auction…

 

An Open Letter to Tim Farron

I received an email from Tim Farron inviting me to join the Liberal Democrats. This post is my response.

INTRODUCTION

I have today received an email from Tim Farron suggesting that I might be interested in joining his party, the Liberal Democrats. What follows is my response…

THE OPEN LETTER

Dear Mr Farron,

I am responding to your email of this lunchtime inviting me to consider joining your party.

While it is true that I voted Liberal Democrat in the 2010 General Election this was for a very specific reason: The Labour Party candidate had made himself impossible to vote for by making as virtually his opening remark of the campaign a comment about Gordon Brown being Britain’s worst ever Prime Minister – which as a candidate standing on behalf of Mr Brown’s party was clearly unacceptable. I did not believe that anyone other than your party’s candidate had a chance of challenging the sitting MP Mr Bellingham (Con), so I voted Liberal Democrat as a desperate tactical measure.

A lot has happened since that General Election, including five years of your party acting as handmaidens to the Tories. In the General Election of earlier this year I was proud to vote for the Labour Party candidate, Jo Rust, and if she is the candidate again in 2020 I will vote for her again. At the same time of the same day I voted for both the Green Party candidates in the local elections.

DSCN4993

While I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the Labour Party performance over the Welfare Bill, there has been a new leader elected since then, and I am liking what I see so far. I will refer to two recent happenings here:

On Friday, Mr Corbyn missed a rugby match to which he could have had free tickets because he was busy helping his constituents (a surgery that ended up running for seven hours). As far as I am concerned someone who puts his constituents ahead of a rugby match deserves applause. The second thing I wish to refer to is that Mr Corbyn has now revealed plans to renationalise the railways (these were mentioned in his manifesto in the leadership contest, which I read in detail). I offer you this infographic that I picked up on twitter:

Railways

On the question of how credible Mr Corbyn is: I do not think that the leader of a party who crashed from 62 MPs down to 8 or an ex-MP (Sir Vince Cable) are in the strongest position to raise such a question!

There is one other reason you might have thought I would be willing to join your party, which is that one of the many petitions which I have signed happens to have been created by a Liberal Democrat (it was calling for a worldwide ban on FGM). I signed the petition in question because I am in full agreement with its aims, not because of who created it.

To conclude, not only am I not remotely interested in joining your party, I am unable to see any circumstance in which I will ever again vote for them – reputations are hard earned and easily lost.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Sutcliffe